Jade Comb Enchased with Flowers and Birds
Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD)
Length: 10.5 cm, width: 3.5 cm, thickness: 0.4 cm
Hemicycle jade comb was made of white jade with a slight cyan in it, enchased with three flowers in the middle of the outer arc and a bird on each side. Below the arc is the fine comb teeth set close together. In the Tang Dynasty, apart from being used to comb one’s hair, combs were often used on the head as ornamentation. This short-teeth comb is very thin with slim teeth, conjectured to be ornamentation.
Jade Censer Sculptured with Cloud and Dragon
Song Dynasty (960 – 1279 AD)
Height: 7.9 cm, mouth diameter: 12.8 cm
The round censer made of steel-gray sapphire has a bulging body with a pair of animal-head handles on it. On the exterior wall, there incised with patterns of flying dragon, lucky clouds and seawater waves. Its interior bottom is incised with a poem by the Qianlong Emperor.
It was very popular to enjoy and appreciate antiquities in the Song Dynasty, and the research on bronzes yielded a rich harvest. Thus a new shape category of jade ware gradually derived from the former ones, imitated jade ware of ancient bronze style. This one was modeled after a bronze Gui (a kind of food vessel), yet much changed on forms and ornament patterns, and the material used was no longer yellow colored.
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